Great to see the FTers helping out here. I can imagine this could be stressful seeming, though seat standby being different than flying standby is a terminology issue it seems DL (or the industry?) could do better on.

And I don't fault OPs brother for going with the lowest fare, sounds like he knew what he was buying. But this situation confirms for me that I am not personally interested in the small savings of Basic vs. V or X fares. Recent shopping it's been a very small per direction price difference.

I haven't seen a way on googleflights to block out Basic econ? I have a lot of date flexibility in my travels to DEN, and get thrown off by the grid showing E fares some days and V or X fares others. It isn't apples:apples for me since I won't book Basic. Suggestions (besides using DL's flexible date search, which is slower and more cumbersome?)